Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Africa's First Live Traffic Google Map

eNowNow Live Lagos TrafficNigerian website eNowNow has launched what I think is the first African Google Maps mashup to show live traffic conditions. The map shows 'live' traffic updates for Lagos. Currently the traffic conditions are updated between the hours of 6am and 8pm Monday to Friday, however the frequency of updates may vary.

eNowNow have overcome the lack of any central or government information about traffic conditions with a marvellously low-tech solution. Traffic information is collected via a team of mobile traffic monitors, who each follow a series of pre-determined routes around Lagos. At a number of pre-selected points along these routes the monitors stop and take a photograph of the current traffic conditions which is then sent via an MMS message.

Roads on the map are coloured to show the current speed of traffic. If you click on any of the map markers an information window opens with information about the speed of traffic and a recently taken photo.